My name is Jens Emil, and I’m a professional trumpet player from Denmark with a great passion for helping, coaching and motivating other people. To become a professional musician can be very hard, yet also very rewarding.
On a daily basis, I hold the position as principal trumpet in the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra and Sinfonietta Riga.
The journey
Choosing to become a professional musician definitely wasn´t the easiest option for me… First of all, to win one of the relative few orchestra positions there are in the world, is a challenge to most trumpet players. Second of all, there was a lot of subjects in high school in which I could stroll along and get good grades without much effort. Music for me wasn’t one of them! But I chose that path anyway, and I have never regretted. Not even when the path towards becoming professional has been tough. Today I make a living off my passion, how privileged is that?!!
I began my musical studies in 2008 at the Royal Academy of Music in Århus with professor Kristian Steenstrup, who gave me a unique understanding of how the body and mind work and thereby how to practice and develop well. I was very lucky to be taken in and accepted by one of the best brass-pedagogues in the world and Kristian was one of the first who really believed in me, even though I had a lot of things to struggle with. In the first year alone, I developed more than I had ever imagined possible.
The frustration
As I began to play better, my biggest problem and frustration was that I never managed to show that development in exams or concerts. I thought if I would just keep practicing, one day I would be so good that I wouldn’t be nervous anymore… And I did get better! But unfortunately also more nervous… I would try to ignore my nervousness by sitting in the canteen, talking and making jokes, until the very last moment before I had to go to class and play in front of all my fellow students. This really did make me feel quite confident and secure… in the canteen. However, the moment I entered the class – feeling the smell of the oiled wooden floors, hearing the sounds of 15 trumpet players warming up and watching the pianist ready to accompany me to what felt like my own funeral – I didn’t feel so confident anymore. My pulse would start to raise and my knees would start to shake.
Because I would come directly out of a secure and confident setting in the canteen, my mind would start to panic. After that, all the things I would have practiced during the week would go down the drain in what felt like a public break down.
The search
After 6 months I began to realize, that something had to be done. One teacher in a masterclass had once told me to “use my nervousness as a friend”. But how exactly do you do that? It´s a tricky friend, that´s for sure.
I even tried learning Tai Chi to see if I could find a better connection to my body and better control of my mind. However, this quickly stopped after an outdoor lesson with my master where I – while struggling severely with my body and balance – looked up to see ALL my fellow students (who happened to have a concert nearby that day). They all stood there watching and laughing. Unfortunately, at that time there was still 45 minutes to go of my lesson and I already paid so I just had to go on as ridiculous as I looked. They got a great show.
Well, to be honest, the main reason I stopped doing Tai Chi, was the fact that it’s a fairly time-consuming discipline. While I still believe we as musicians could learn a lot from it, I felt my time was better spent elsewhere. Maybe one day when I retire I´ll buy a private park or forest and take it up again.
The mindset-change
The most important moment in my development and career was ultimately after approximately 8 months of studying in the academy. After another failed attempt to perform in front of people I sat down and had a serious rethink of everything. Did I really want to become a musician? Would I be able to make it? And furthermore, HOW could I make it?
I wasn’t in doubt! I wanted to become a professional musician more than anything else. But how do you do that, when you never deliver well in front of people? And that was the first time I said it out loud to myself:
You have a problem playing under stress and you need to fix it!
I couldn’t anymore run away from the fact that I got nervous. Nor could I avoid my nerves through socializing, Tai Chi or anything else. I needed to face my own nervousness! I needed to accept it, understand it and learn to play WHILE being nervous instead of trying to control or avoid my nerves. Suddenly my whole mindset changed because now there was a parameter that I could work with. I made some ground rules for myself that I have been following ever since and that I now also give to my students:
- Nervousness can’t be controlled by avoiding it! Instead, you need to understand it by knowing all the symptoms YOU experience such as shaking knees, dry mouth, cold hands etc.
- Practicing to play WHILE being nervous is a parameter to practice like anything else. Just like we practice tone quality, rhythm, finger techniques etc. etc. It should be done often and carefully.
- Every time you are in a situation where you get nervous, it´s a unique chance to practice handling it!
This changed my world and mindset. Suddenly I saw all concerts and classes as part of a bigger development. Even though I still would get very nervous, I didn´t anymore see my performances as failures. Instead, I saw them as great settings to develop the skill of performing under pressure. Since then I have been searching for tools to perform while being under pressure. It’s all these ideas, tools and experiences that I’m hoping to share with you on this site and possibly through personal coaching.
The method
After almost 7 years of reading, studying and keeping a personal notebook in which I would evaluate my own practice and performance, I began coaching an increasing amount of fellow students. In the beginning, it was mainly as a friend who would listen and encourage. But slowly the sessions began to take form as actual coaching. In 2017 I wrote a master thesis on the subject at The Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen under supervision from Line Fredens, a well-known and very competent music-performance coach. This process was enlightening and inspiring! I finally had a chance to make further research as well as to put some of my thoughts into words. To get them sorted and systemized. After writing my master thesis I was hooked on coaching mental performance…
The desire to help others
When I look back, there are a bunch of things that I wish I would have known much earlier on. Both in order to perform better, but also in order to feel more calm and balanced on the way. Music is wonderful and we should never forget that! Despite the hard competition and the high demands among musicians, we should never forget the reason why we are in this business in the first place. Our love for music should always shine through the hard work and difficult situations we have to put ourselves through.
Even if we make it professionally, it´s not worth it, if we have spent 10 years of our life suffering to get there. Way too often, I have seen students and colleagues breaking themselves down in the process. It’s my greatest wish to help people to practice and prepare for high-performance situations, without losing the quality of life throughout the process.
Jens Emil Holm